In Darwin's Shadow: The Life and Science of Alfred Russel Wallace ...

The Psychology of Biography /19
presents his theories on species polymorphyism, mimicry, and protective
coloration.
5. “On the Monkeys of the Amazon” (1852). In this early paper Wallace identifies
the Amazon River and its many tributaries as reproductive isolating
mechanisms that separate species and helps account for the biogeographical
distribution patterns observed by naturalists.
6. “Sir Charles Lyell on Geological Climates and the Origin of Species” (1869).
This is the paper that caused Darwin so much grief over Wallace’s belief
that natural selection cannot account for the human mind and that, therefore,
a higher intelligence must have intervened. Within the scientific community
this is Wallace’s most controversial publication.
7. “On the Law Which Has Regulated the Introduction of New Species” (1855).
This is the “Sarawak paper” in which Wallace states his belief in evolution
as the theory best able to account for the geographical distribution of species.
Most striking in this ranking of Wallace’s most cited works is the lack of
a single nonscientific publication. There is not one of Wallace’s many social
commentaries that has survived into our time, and this is indicative of what
in Wallace’s work is currently important to us and what is not. For us, Wallace’s
science is what matters most, even though historically and in his own
time, clearly these social issues were vital and compelling to both him and
his contemporaries. To the extent that we remember Wallace (and that extent
has been rather limited throughout most of the twentieth century), we do so
primarily for his contributions to natural history and evolutionary theory. And
that remembrance is primarily due to the fact that evolutionary theory has
triumphed like no other overarching theory has since Newton united terrestrial
and celestial mechanics into a cosmic worldview. Wallace’s contribution to
the monumental, pedestal-shattering evolution revolution was second only to
Darwin’s.
Themata
The deepest themes running throughout Wallace’s many and diverse works
are, as we saw earlier, those that concern most synthetic thinkers: Theory—
Data; Contingency—Necessity; Adaptationism—Nonadaptationism; Time’s
Arrow—Time’s Cycle; Punctuationism—Gradualism. In the narrative biography
we will be exploring these in depth as they form the core of Wallace’s
thoughts, both scientific and social, and go a long way toward binding the
varied details of his work with a handful of generalities. Some examples here,
however, will suffice to show how important such themata were to Wallace.
Theory—Data concerns the interaction of culture and science, concepts and
percepts. When Wallace was only twenty, for example, he wrote a paper
entitled “The Advantages of Varied Knowledge,” inspired by his experiences